“This is one of the big things I like about the MGS series, that the firearms are just tools to be used, in there with the rest of your items, rather than being practically a part of your character's hand the whole game.”
— Kojima's approach to game design

“It’s a matter of a game developer and a game audience who are both remarkably clueless about how RE5’s depiction of Africans fits nicely with the tradition of racism in the West”
— Cosmopolitan evil: A Guide to the Resident Evil 5 controversies

“When the config screen says 'Jab' and requires you to press the button you want, you just press the upper left button on your stick (or whatever button on your gamepad). This is a one-step process. But if the screen lists 'X' and then requires you to scroll through functions until you find jab, it requires a two step process. You have to know which button on your controller is labeled 'X.' When this screen is the right way, no one has to know if the upper left button happens to be X or A or B or whatever else.”
— A Few Things About Street Fighter 4


“I've created a . . . font machine! It'll allow you to create phrases in [70+] font styles ripped from your favourite arcade games.”
— NFG's arcade font machine

“When I develop I try to be conscious of controlling a man who's on a horse, not the horse itself. So I intentionally delayed the control response, knowing it could spoil operability, which was a difficult choice.”
— Shadow of the Colossus Postmortem Interview

“I like these following games, but there's a negative undercurrent in each of them that tells me 'this game is bad for you.'”
— what is a good videogame story?

“but what you're subtracting is knowledge about the inner state of the character. you're subtracting immersion. is a comic book more immersive without word bubbles?”
— The Big Zelda Ideas Thread

“the industry that he supported so studiously during his formative years--pumping quarters in some quixotic search for dream realization--doesn't seem to remember him”
— Why do we like videogames?

“I would add that WoW's super(over)polished design actually reinforces these problems. It's so easy to find players, group up, and cruise through the encounters of a dungeon or BG (arenas and raids are a different matter) that the game almost plays itself. It encourages you to treat other players as means rather than ends, because you're so insulated from them. You can easily join a group, run an instance, divide the loot and check out without saying a word. They might as well be really good AI.”
— Cooperative Play

“Me and a friend of mine were just talking about this, how videogames need auteurs and how most of the greatest games are made by one person with unwavering vision at the helm. 'Design by committee' is the death knell of all art.

EXCEPT

Valve does literally the opposite; there’s no heirarchy at all and everyone has input on everything. And they make fantastic games anyway!”
...
“I figure by 'gameplay' they mean what would remain if you removed all context and theme and were just left with a completely abstract game.”
— BioShock is “not art”

“The core of every great drummer is the way he feels his way around the beat, while guiding the band along with his explorations. He’s not the lead surgeon in a world-class brain transplant operation; he’s Daniel Boone, deep in dangerous territory with a few scraggly frontiersman behind him, and he doesn’t quite know where he’s going, but they trust that he’ll get them there safe and sound. ... In other words, fuck Rock Band for not letting me throw two kicks on the bass drum leading into the verse, this time, instead of the one mandated by whatever record label licensed them the song.”
...
“I’ll add that a certain degree of suck, of imperfection, is necessary for the essence of Rock and Roll, for the self-perpetuating death and rebirth cycle of Rock and Roll that people like The Beatles and The Sex Pistols have helped to encourage and which people like The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame seek to end. I think of these games as the very antithesis of Rock and Roll, a way to mummify and preserve things that should be composted and turned into a flower garden.”
— Rock Band is “too much harder than having a real band”

“None of these art-forms have a responsibility to portray groups of people sympathetically. But the media should invite and study reactions to these portrayals.”
— Useful Debate

“NOW; what makes that story bad and, for example, War and Peace good? CONFLICT, which has two forms, INTERNAL and EXTERNAL. Internal conflicts are what make something literature, external conflicts are what make a summer blockbuster.”
— Video game stories are terrible

“4 = linear, epic; operatic (non-DQ) jrpg
5 = pleasantly regressive; hobby-celebrating
6 = celebratory, sprawling, genre-defining
7 = confident, technological, fetishism
8 = postmodern, only conceivable followup
9 = falteringly regressive, nostalgic
X = hollow, confident, self-conscious
X-2 = more hollow, more confident, more self-conscious
XII = brilliant, unfinished, discomforting”
— The Final Fantasy Thread

“The morph ball shift made you believe Samus could really become the morph ball, but the HUD is what made you believe you were really Samus.”
— Cameras

“When we're playing Super Mario 64, we're really responsible for two characters. We move Mario around. And we have to keep tabs on Lakitu to make sure he's giving us the shot that we need. These new perspectives complicate things. Are we Mario? Are we Lakitu? Or are we the camera that Lakitu is dangling?”
— Lakitu is the default cinematographer of all 3rd person video games

“Anyone who calls the Colossi of SotC 'bosses' is missing the point. They are no mere bosses; they are the game's story. Just looking at them is all the narrative the game needs, which is why these moments are accompanied by orchestral arrangements.”
— Shhh: Sounds of Silence

“I can appreciate games like CoD4 on a certain level, but can I help preferring another kind of game? Is it indefensible to say that I prefer Tarkovsky over Sam Raimi? Sure, the avant-garde always exists 'fungally' on top of extant forms, so you can't eliminate them.”
— Gravitation

“We've become accustomed to think of difficulty as having to increase as the player progresses, and consider difficulties that do the opposite, in general, to be poorly adjusted. The challenge is supposed to escalate as we get better at the game, keeping us interested and entertained through this balance.”
— Difficulty is not a staircase!

“I'm going to paste this review into another review in about five minutes, and give it a four-star rating, add a different final sentence, and maybe cut a couple parts out or change a couple phrasings. Make of that what you will. Don’t worry, though: this is the real review.”
— Super Smash Bros. Brawl is “the best bowel-movement simulator yet”

“The Krauser fight is the perfect example of a good QTE - it is infrequent, highlights a climax of the game, elaborates story, and focuses solely on the QTE's strength of reaction resulting in tension that hardly ever appears in any other games. There are better solutions, but we haven't seen one implemented in 3D nearly as eloquently as the Krauser fight.”
— Resident Evil Fucking 4

“Saying 'it’s good co-op' is like saying 'it’s good if you put bacon on it.' Well, no shit.”
— Halo 3 is “the precise reason kids don’t play with G.I. Joes anymore”

“This'd make a good counterpart to a high-stakes, single-segment speedrun, or any of the original, laborious asshole mario videos ... being able to shrug off and even admire all these slips and blunders feels cathartic”
— Averaging Asshole Mario

“The result was the video up top, showing the 134 attempts it took me to successfully get through level 1 of Kazio Mario World.”
— Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics

“inserting random garbage into SMB roms”
— super mørio bros


“Contra loaded in Gryzor”
— Saving a state in one ROM then loading it in a different ROM